Ticket to Ride

In a world where the bulk of Filipinos secured their vaccination, enormous attention has been drawn to those who remain unvaccinated against COVID-19 whose primary concern is vaccine safety. If the government can ban smoking in enclosed public spaces to shield public health, then why cannot they provide protection against a highly contagious and deadly disease? Perhaps this is one of the government’s neoteric sentiments towards the region’s worst omicron-driven surge that led the Department of Transportation (DOTr) to rapidly implement the ‘no vax, no ride’ policy.

A policy as demarcating as this appears to be just burying the most imperative issues of lack of plan to suppress the surge and driving away from the rights-based approach such as free mass testing, efficient surveillance system, isolation, contact tracing, and treatment. The government must’ve been so fond of clinging to the anti-poor and anti-people policy-making schemes. If you think of it, the world of the unvaccinated is getting petite in the course of time which started from being blocked to government buildings, malls, restaurants and now prohibited from riding any public transport. Looking back, the Philippines was the last country in Southeast Asia to launch its vaccination program where Duterte’s pandemic task force was sorely ill-prepared. Based on the Philippine National Deployment and Vaccination Plan for COVID-19 Vaccines (NDVP), the congress approved ₱82.5B to procure the vaccines where the ₱2.5B is readily available for nationwide usage. The grandness of it, ₱70B, turned out as an unfunded cheque placed separately under “unprogrammed appropriations”, while the rest is a backup fund which the finance department is still contending to subsidize. With million vaccine doses reaped from donations and purchases, vaccination is still advancing at a turtle’s pace. Since Duterte’s task force advised congress behindhand, the vaccine rollout was needlessly put off and the Philippines succumbed to other countries in obtaining vaccine supplies from manufacturers besides Sinovac. Unable to solve constrictions in accession, coordination and administration, the government consistently misses its own aim. For these reasons, it is extremely unfair if those who want to get vaccinated but have limited access are denied public transportation. Ask yourself, is it always the people’s fault who were willing to line up to be vaccinated, when the government cannot address the demand? Partially vaccinated passengers in Metro Manila have been reportedly unable to travel to their workplaces because the order only permits fully vaccinated people to hop on public transportation. Because of this, the labor chief clarified that workers should be exempted from the rule. But the supposed transparency of the policy which is criticized as impractical and violative of people’s right to travel, emerged to be not fuzzy among enforcers who ended up forbidding workers who have not been fully vaccinated. Even if there is immunity made only for the unvaccinated that have medical reasons or have to do essentials, conversely, partially vaccinated commuters are strictly not given enough consideration by enforcers. Showing how detached officials are from the reality on the ground, the prevailing notion is that more people will lose jobs and livelihood, leaving them unable to pay for their basic needs. In case of certain areas with a high demand for vaccines from the local population despite the virus spike, the implementation of irresistible measures seems to be irrelevant because the policy should focus on the regions with sluggish operations. While DOTr defended the policy by stating that it’s meant to avert the exhaustive shutdown of public transport as observed in the fresh months of the pandemic, which is another means of keeping the economy open, curbing the mobility of 58 million unvaccinated Filipinos nowise entirely supports the operations on economy. There may be admissible arguments for enforcing restrictions on individuals who are unvaccinated, but these people should not experience denial of access to essential government services. Despite every stipulation, unvaccinated individuals must also continue to be granted to access essential services. Similar policies must envisage valid exemptions such as religious and valid medical grounds. In making this possible, the implementation of the ‘no vax, no ride’ policy to the common Filipinos is like a tall barrier built out of despair and jitters to hide from the real bandits. Who knows, this is what the government meant when they disclosed that the country was now more ready to face the Omicron variant after gaining ordeals from previous waves. Whether citizens conform or not on this policy, there’s one thing where people could settle on – the government must escalate all efforts to convince more people to be vaccinated, so that a policy like this may not be necessary ultimately. While they believe that not imposing interventions is extra antipoor and anti-life that induces loss of life due to non-vaccinations, the other side of the coin similarly does not promote basic human rights. In solving the nation’s greatest challenge, it is a remorse that the proposed solution has been creating another dispute. There are other deterrent actions that they can ratify in order to weaken the spread of the new variant and reassure citizens to get vaccinated without having to taint their basic human rights. Assertive information dissemination would be a great strategy to mass educate every single member of barangay communities, especially those who lack internet access. There should also be extended information drives for the enforcers of the rule who ignore the weeping of the unvaccinated passengers. And while it is the government’s responsibility to regard, protect, and effectuate every human’s rights, people also have to serve their part by being dutiful and promoting the common good to end the threat of pandemic. Remember the time when Filipinos exasperated of beating poverty, corruption, and confusion and found their deceitful salvation in an aloof lawyer from the southern Philippines? Few years after his ruling, folks find themselves once more at the tail end of government priorities. This might sound forlorn, which it should be, but the repeating acts of inequality seem to reach out and hunt almost every aspect of Filipino lives. For all we know, the right of an individual will always be subservient to the rights of the majority.